Do create a topic branch to work on instead of working directly on master to preserve the history of your pull request. See PR#8000 for an example of losing commit history as soon as you update your own master branch.

topic branch links to this, which is overly verbose and isn't newbie friendly (branches: how do they work?). The page contains a wall of text and multiple diagrams, but no commands to run. Creating a branch for a one-off PR is pretty simple, and shouldn't require multiple diagrams.

The other references for contributors on the wiki aren't helpful either.

Following that link takes you to a page which begins by stating in bold This page is meant for Committers. If you are unsure whether you are a committer, you are not. - that's kind of a turn off. The page also makes zero references to "feature branch."

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